Grillaxin' with Christina Choi, Part One

​Christina Choi is a familiar face to Seattle Farmer's Markets shoppers. As co-founder, along with Jeremy Faber, of Foraged & Found Edibles, which supplies local wild ingredients -- berries, nettles, mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns -- to many of the area's top restaurants, Choi's knowledge of these ingredients runs deep.

For the past few years, Choi has been working as a chef about town (previously she worked at the Herbfarm alongside Faber and Matt Dillon, and you're likely to find her moonlighting at events put on by One Pot or the Corson Building), as well as writing and promoting her Illustrated Wild Foods Recipe Calendar, a year's worth of her recipes featuring a different wild seasonal item each month. Just this week, news broke that Choi will be opening her first restaurant, Nettletown (also the name of her blog), in the old Sitka & Spruce space on Eastlake Avenue.

What were your culinary inspirations?
My family, home cooking, old cookbooks, communes, the earth.

Is there an ingredient or dish that you're particularly into these days?
Right now I'm loving Korean chili pepper -- they sell them in big, cheap bags, and you can put it in everything for a boost. I don't like crazy spicy food, and these sweet, moist medium-spicy chili flakes are perfect. I love the super-fine shreds, too.

I am way into seaweed, too. Even after many moons of eating, studying, and cooking it, it still remains this huge world I feel I have barely touched on -- an oceanic underworld that is immense, mysterious, alive, and waiting to nourish us. The best seaweed treat is another Korean thing that rocks -- crispy fried nori sheets: lacy, salty, crispy, yummy.

You're making a pizza. What's on it?
Fresh porcini, marjoram, Pecorino. Or lemon slices, asparagus, herbs. Or ricotta, sweet onion, and rosemary! I guess I can't decide.

Where do you eat if you have just $5? Where would you eat if you had $100?
$5: Thanh Son Tofu. That place warms my culinary heart. There's lots of little, special Vietnamese treats just like in Vietnam, awesome fried tofu, and the pickled vegetables in fish sauce.

$100: Sushi! Anywhere, anytime ... well, almost anywhere.

Favorite Seattle restaurant?
Green Leaf (and Corson).

What would you like to see more of in Seattle from a culinary standpoint?
More ethnic restaurants breaking out of the menu mold. Why do so many have menus that look like they came out of a guide?

And I wish more of these restaurants would use stop using so many seasonless American vegetables. I am bored with Thai restaurants that serve zucchini and broccoli in every dish. Where are the Asian veggies at Thai restaurants?

What's next for you?
Nettletown! My first restaurant. Aaaahhhhhhhhh!

Check back tomorrow for more with Christina Choi, including all the details on Nettletown.